Monday, April 28, 2014

Otautau Street Party

Now that fall is beginning and its starting to get colder here, I thought I'd look back to the warmer days of Christmas in NZ. Rebecca and I went on a 6 day trip around the entire south island, which will take several posts to show you, but before we went there was a street party here in little Otautau. For being such a little town, there is great sense of community and it seemed like everyone was out that day.

For starters, the kids of town prepared some dance moves at school and performed for everyone. One of the finest chicken dances ever! Well done kids!

Of course, what kind of Christmas festival would you have without Santa Claus! He was their taking pictures with all the kids and I'm sure collecting gift ideas... Looks like someone is thinkin' real hard about what they want for Christmas...

Nearby was a little Christmas tree full of ornaments from the local children. Lots to be grateful for... You will notice there is no snow on the ground in the middle of their Christmas... :) It was a beautiful day...

Lots of activities for the kids to do... They would crawl into these inflatable balls and stumble around trying to run into each other on the water. No one is in them at the moment, because they are all participating in Karaoke down the street at the moment. Watching the middle school boys rocking Katy Perry's "Roar" and Justin Timberlake's "Bringing Sexy Back" was pretty epic... Great job guys!

No Cole... you CAN'T jump in the bouncy castle...

Talents were on display... This guy was carving wood lawn sculptures including this small kiwi... Actually a pretty good representation... They auctioned them off for charity later in the day.

Other groups were getting in on the action too. Instead of the dunk tank they had a little water bucket... People were volunteering to take the splash for the local pool... 3 throws was pretty loose, when the kids missed on three they would just run up and hit the plunger anyways...

The fire brigade had an interesting approach for raising money too. They brought in an old junker of a car that was pretty much gone. It did still start though. They took bets on how long it would take for the engine to burn out if they dropped a brick on the accelerator... what would your guess be? I said something like 2 minutes (not the most, some people as high as 10 minutes!) The thing didn't last 30 seconds...

One of the best things about all the street fairs is the fair food! The donut dude is usually at most of the events... you can buy your mini donuts by the bucket! Don't worry, we haven't ordered that many yet... but not bad at all...